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The solar industry isn't afraid of President Trump

State and local officials, along with members of the Colorado River Indian Tribes, cut a ceremonial ribbon at NextEra's Blythe and McCoy solar farms in eastern Riverside County on Nov. 10, 2016. At far right is County Supervisor John Benoit.(Photo: Jay Calderon/The Desert Sun)Buy Photo

Two days after the election of a president who has attacked renewable energy and called climate change a hoax, clean power advocates gathered near the California-Arizona border to celebrate the opening of two huge solar farms — and to make the case that climate-friendly energy will continue to thrive in the Donald Trump era.

The two solar farms, Blythe and McCoy, span 4,000 acres in Riverside County, and will generate enough electricity to power 181,000 homes. Most of that energy is being bought by Southern California Edison, with the rest going to the health care giant Kaiser Permanente, which has committed to significantly reducing its contribution to global warming. A combined 4 million solar panels gleamed under the bright desert sunlight Thursday morning, tilting upward to track the sun's movement through the sky.

“We see this as a tangible example of our commitment to the total health of the communities we serve," said Rame Hemstreet, Kaiser's chief sustainable resources officer, during the commissioning ceremony. "Climate change is inextricably linked to the health of those communities, and it's already impacting the health of our members, through increased rates of asthma and other lung ailments, economically crippling drought and extreme weather events."

Renewable energy has boomed in the United States during Barack Obama's presidency, with generation from solar plants like Blythe and McCoy growing 300-fold and generation from wind turbines increasing by a factor of three and a half, according to data from the Energy Information Administration.

But that stunning growth hit an unexpected roadblock Tuesday with the election of Trump, who has called the Obama administration's investment in solar technology a "disaster" and said Palm Springs' iconic wind turbines are "the worst thing you’ve ever seen." The Republican president-elect has promised to "cancel all wasteful climate change spending," including funding for clean energy research and development, and has pledged aggressive support for planet-warming fossil fuels.

Companies will keep building solar and wind farms over the next few years, experts say, because those technologies are already cost-competitive with fossil fuels in much of the country — and they're still getting cheaper. And at least in the short term, California should be largely insulated from Trump's energy policies. The state's ambitious climate programs, including a 50 percent clean energy mandate and a cap-and-trade program to limit carbon emissions, will continue to drive solar and wind development.

"I was a little surprised with Tuesday's results, and I'm not sure where this is taking us," Riverside County Supervisor John Benoit, a Republican and longtime clean energy advocate who declined to publicly support Trump or Hillary Clinton, said at Thursday's event. "But I'm very, very hopeful that the positive things we’ve done in California…of trying to do what's right for the Earth, for our air and for the environment, (can continue) in larger numbers in the future."

But if Trump follows through on his plans to cut support for clean energy, the long-term growth of solar and wind would almost certainly slow, at least outside California.

Trump has promised to rescind the Clean Power Plan, an Obama regulation designed to hasten the shift from fossil fuels to renewables by requiring states to cut carbon emissions. He's also pledged to withdraw the United States from the international climate deal struck by 195 nations in Paris last year. While the agreement took effect last week, it has no enforcement mechanism, meaning Trump could simply refuse to take the actions necessary to meet America's commitments.

Those steps would "obviously send a negative signal into the next decade" for renewable energy, said Ethan Zindler, head of U.S. policy analysis at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, a research firm. To meet its Paris commitments, the United States would need to dramatically speed up the pace of clean energy development, even compared to the boom that's taken place over the last decade. That means a future without the Paris agreement could be remarkably different than one with it.

Climate advocates fear that if the United States backs away from the Paris deal, then two of the world's other biggest carbon emitters, China and India, will do the same, locking in a dangerously unstable climate for millennia. But Zindler said a different outcome is also possible. If America doesn't lead the world on fighting climate change, he speculated, China could step into the void, ramping up its solar and wind industries at home and funding clean energy development abroad.

"The vacuum that the United States creates might give them an opportunity to take a moral high ground on climate," Zindler said. "U.S. departure from the Paris accord would be a major blow to solving the world climate problem, but it might not be the end."

Trump could also sign a law eliminating investment tax credits for solar and wind, which would be a serious blow to those industries over the next few years. But clean energy advocates see that possibility as unlikely, since it would require congressional action. Congress extended the tax credits last year with some Republican support.

In the short run, solar and wind developers are projecting confidence as best they can.

The morning after the election, Tom Kiernan, CEO of the American Wind Energy Association, released a statement saying his group is "ready to work with President-elect Donald Trump and his administration to assure that wind power continues to be a vibrant part of the U.S. economy." Kiernan pointed out that 80 percent of U.S. wind farms are in congressional districts represented by Republicans, and noted that Trump once said, "We can pursue all forms of energy. This includes renewable energies."

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Thousands came out to see Donald Trump speak at the Anaheim Convention Center on Wednesday, May 25, 2016.(Photo: Richard Lui/The Desert Sun)

Dan Whitten, a spokesperson for the Solar Energy Industries Association, was cautiously optimistic, pointing to solar's increasing status as an economic powerhouse. The industry employed 209,000 people in the United States in 2015, according to the nonprofit Solar Foundation — more than oil and gas extraction combined.

"Those are the sorts of things that no president would want to stand in the way of," Whitten said. "Whether it’s the Clean Power Plan or some other approach, we are going to try to make the case with the Trump administration that most people view climate change as an important policy issue, and there are ways to move forward in reducing greenhouse gas emissions that can also support job growth and economic growth."

There was no sense of discouragement at the Blythe and McCoy solar farms in Riverside County on Thursday. The 250-megawatt McCoy project will provide electricity for Southern California Edison, and could be built out to as many as 750 megawatts if its developer, Florida-based NextEra Energy Resources, can find buyers for that much electricity. The same is true of Blythe, which NextEra built at 235 megawatts — 125 for Edison, 110 for Kaiser — but could expand to 485 megawatts.

About $3.4 billion in capital went into the two projects, according to NextEra CEO Armando Pimentel. In a brief interview after the commissioning ceremony, Pimentel said Trump's election doesn't change his view of solar power as a smart long-term investment.

"Look at what’s been going on around the country for the last decade, through Democratic administrations and Republican administrations. All throughout that period, renewables have continued the trend of increasing capacity," he said.

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Solar panels reflect clouds overhead at the Desert Sunlight solar farm in Riverside County, California on Aug. 20, 2014. When the 550-megawatt facility opened, it was the world's largest solar farm.(Photo: Crystal Chatham/The Desert Sun)

At the same time, it's not clear whether Blythe and McCoy would have been built under a President Trump — at least not in the same spots. Both projects sit on federal land and required approval from the Bureau of Land Management, an agency within the Interior Department. There's no requirement for Interior to approve clean energy projects, and rumored candidates for Trump's Interior secretary include two oil moguls, Lucas Oil co-founder Forrest Lucas and Continental Resources CEO Harold Hamm.

The Obama administration has set a goal of approving 20,000 megawatts of renewable energy on public lands by 2020, and it's made a lot of progress toward meeting that target. In Riverside County, there are now three large-scale solar plants on federal land, all owned by NextEra. In addition to Blythe and McCoy, there's the 550-megawatt Desert Sunlight project about halfway between Palm Springs and the Arizona border, which was briefly the world's largest solar plant when it opened last year.

The Interior Department says it's approved 60 solar, wind and geothermal plants on public lands since 2009, capable of producing more than 15,000 megawatts of climate-friendly energy. But just 31 of those facilities are operating or under construction. Six have been cancelled and 21 are stuck in limbo, some due to economic difficulties and others because of concerns over environmental impacts. Two of the geothermal projects on the list were actually approved by President George W. Bush's administration.